Once more, he wondered how exactly the System prevented him from needing any mortal forms of sustenance. It was strange to say the least, but he suspected that it had something to do with the fact that his body was being conditioned to live off of mana rather than normal things like food, and the fact that he was leveling up so quickly was resetting the fatigue and hunger that his body was building up. If he wanted for a month, he would eventually have to eat and drink, but at this rate, there was no need to do so.
He had seen this in action by realizing that Edgar had a small water pouch attached to his armor on his belt, which he would sometimes take a swig from. His physical stats were lower than Jonathan’s, meaning that he would need to drink and eat more frequently than he did. However, Jonathan did not think that needing to drink was solely to do with his physical stats, as the amount that he needed decreased per level up, more than a simple increase of a couple of points would have merited. These thoughts helped him to concentrate on his task, and he slowly worked into a rhythm of casting that allowed him to practice his skills more efficiently.
Because of the small mana cost of his skill, he was able to cast it hundreds of times without running out of mana, and he was able to refine it. While he did not grow much better over the few hours that he practiced within, he did manage to get a better idea of how the skills worked. Basically what he was doing was extending his mana out into his arm and then using the pressure from behind to catapult it outwards. It was easier with excess mana, but the skill allowed him to mimic being in that state by filling his mana channels.
He was slowly realizing that there was far more to this world that met the eye, but there was an almost incomprehensible gap between his current state and true understanding. Jonathan slowly became more acclimated to using his mana in this new way, and eventually he was able to reach an appreciable level of understanding, and he left his chamber to meet Edgar. He was ready to fight some more monsters, hopefully ones that were weak enough to test his skills on. Although there were infrequent Tier 2 monsters roaming around out here, they were too rare to be counted on, and if the two men were to hope to reach the next Tier, they would need to fight whatever they could get, and increase their power in other ways.
Edgar was practicing with his elemental abilities, sitting on a pillar of concentrated energy in the middle of the room, but when Jonathan left his own space, Edgar cracked open one eye.
“Ready to hunt some monsters?” Jonathan asked the other man.
“Of course,” Edgar replied, banishing his pillar of wind, and landing softly on the floor.
Jonathan headed out of the cave first, spotting a small pack of Ash Prowlers roaming around the bottom of the mountain, likely looking for food. They looked half starved, but that would only mean that they were more dangerous in a fight, as their desperation would outweigh their common sense, as little of that that the beasts possessed.
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Jonathan summoned crackling power to his fists and raced down the mountain, with Edgar floating behind him. The monsters looked up and started baying wildly at Jonathan, starting up the mountain. Jonathan reached them first however, and started to spray them with his mana projectiles, causing the creature to yelp in pain. He withdrew slowly, sending more projectiles after the monsters, using the natural slope of the mountain to keep them away from him.
He slowly whittled down their health over time, in time for Edgar to reach him. Between them, they sent bolts of energy down at the mid-level monsters, who were tougher than the Ash Prowlers that Jonathan had faced upon first entering this world. Their levels were about the middle of Tier 1, which meant that they had a decent amount of health to soak up the damage that the two men were outputting. Both of them could have ended the monsters in the blink of an eye, but they refrained, in order to train their mana. If the monsters had been an actual threat, they would have pulled out all the stops, but as it was, the creature would barely have even damaged Jonathan if they managed to land a hit, meaning that he was basically invulnerable against them.
He could feel his control over his skill waxing as he tested it against real opponents that moved away from his strikes. Only about half of his attacks were landing, mainly because of the fact that his high Dexterity was allowing him to track the monsters. It was unreasonably hard for him to pull off the skills, and he wondered if there was something else to it, as he could see Edgar effortlessly sending off unerring bolts of elemental power. So far, the man had not missed once.
It caused Jonathan more than a small amount of annoyance, but he kept it in rein, using the anger to focus his own attacks. One of the keys to surviving in a world like this was being able to keep your emotions in check, and knowing when your ego would have to bow to common sense.
Jonathan would have been captured back in that city if he had tried to face up against Granath rather than simply running away, and he knew that the worm had only failed to apprehend him because he had been unfamiliar with his skills. Now that the worm knew about his skill set, he would send fighters after him that would be able to apprehend him properly. The only way to stop this was to either grow in strength until he was unstoppable, or diversify his skillet. Out of those two things, the latter was far more reasonable.
If he had years out here in the ash, he could level up past Granath, but he suspected that there was something else at play here. There was no way that an entire world would have been stuck at Tier 2 for eons, unless there was something else going on here. Likely, there was no way for anyone to grow beyond a certain amount of power, at least in levels, which was probably why Granath had not personally come after Jonathan. He had probably increased the amount of ambient energy around his palace in order to sustain himself.
Now that Jonathan realized this, he remembered that he had felt slightly more energized in the bounds of the palace than outside of it. Everything was suddenly making a lot more sense. It was why the name of Granath was used more as a threat than anything else, as the worm was unable to physically come after any rebels. Instead, he would send his legions out to do his bidding for him.